[4] The daughter of an Irish-born bus inspector father, Joseph, and a Salford-born mother, Elsie Tremlow,[1] Delaney was born in 1938 in Broughton, Salford, Lancashire.

[7] Delaney wrote her first play in ten days, after seeing Terence Rattigan's Variation on a Theme (some sources say it was after seeing Waiting for Godot),[8] at the Opera House, Manchester[9] during its pre–West End tour.

[20] The Encyclopedia of British Writers: 19th and 20th Centuries comments that it "portrays an impoverished family, whose income comes from peddling trinkets", but "the best qualities of the first play are absent.

"[21] The novelist Jeanette Winterson, though, has commented that the contemporary reviews of these first two plays' first performances "read like a depressing essay in sexism".

According to Phil Wickham, writing for the Screenonline website, the film script "contrives to keep in Delaney's best lines while creating a cinematic rather than a theatrical experience".

[28] Delaney died from breast cancer and heart failure, five days before her 73rd birthday, at the home of her daughter Charlotte in Suffolk, England.

[5] In 1986, the Smiths' lead singer and lyricist Morrissey said: "I've never made any secret of the fact that at least 50 per cent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney".